


T'was the night before

by butterflymind



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Christmas, Family, Gambling, Gen, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflymind/pseuds/butterflymind
Summary: Four Christmas Eves.





	T'was the night before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takadainmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/gifts).



**One**

Two mince pies, their pastry slightly scorched, were framing the holly leaves that were the plate’s central design. Svlad couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t used the plate at Christmas, and couldn’t remember a time before it had been just as it was now; its face bisected by a snaking crack in the glaze, and a chip in the rim on one side revealing the rough surface of the clay. He ran his finger over the chip just to check, but it felt the same as always.

Still, there was something wrong with the mince pies, or the plate, or with Svlad. He found it hard to tell sometimes which thing it was that was wrong, but ever more frequently a feeling of wrongness pervaded his whole consciousness, like the world was a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had been forced into the wrong places. His fingers itched to take it apart and reassemble it right, except he didn’t know what the jigsaw was, or where the pieces were, or how any of it went together. He had tried to explain it to his mother once but she had smiled and patted him on the head, ruffling his hair in that vague and English way of hers. Right now she was fluttering around the sideboard, hunting the dusty bottle of sherry that came out precisely once a year. The TV told Svlad that Santa liked milk and cookies, and bright eyed American children with excessively white teeth. But Svlad had always put out sherry and mince pies on Christmas Eve with his mother, and his shoes freshly shined on the fifth with his father. He liked the feeling of it, of being part of two different but complimentary worlds. Increasingly, it was the only thing that felt right.

But right now it didn’t feel right at all. The itch was increasing, the feeling of those jigsaw pieces bent out of shape by clumsy fingers was growing by the second. Sighing, Svlad closed his eyes, and felt the edge of the plate again. Not the plate, the plate hadn’t changed and it had always been alright before. His hand hovered over the mince pies, but they were fine as well. The sherry glass was thick cut, facets of glass divided by swirling lines from stem to lip. It was part of a mismatched set that had travelled with them when they had first come to England, some broken along the way, some lost forever. Svlad didn’t remember it any other way than this though, he had been just a baby then. He opened his eyes as his mother guided his hand to pour sherry from the bottle into the little glass, as she gently reminded him that Father Christmas only bought presents to good little boys who were asleep before ten p.m. Svlad knew that, had heard it every year as a beloved mantra. He was so tired, but his fingers still itched, the twitch and pull of... something. Even as his mother gently herded him from the living room to the bathroom, through teeth brushing and face washing and into his pyjamas.

When she left him tucked in his own bed he closed his eyes again, but not to sleep. He had learned, slowly, that sometimes the only way to find the wrong thing was to let himself drift, that a stillness so basically alien to his nature was nonetheless the only way to move forward. He lay still long enough to hear the sounds of his parents going to bed, the ancient heating of the house thumping and creaking its way through its own private night time ritual. His fingers twitched in the blankets, he felt asleep yet also more awake. Eventually his eyes opened to find the darkness almost absolute, the curtains tightly shut and no light peaking from the gap under the door. The rug beside his bed was cool under his bare feet, the wooden floorboards even more so. A brass doorknob he could not reach a year ago turned silently under his hand and he crept down the stairs, skipping the seventh step that creaked like a mournful ghost, leaning his weight heavily on the banisters to avoid the sound of his own footfalls.

At the bottom of the stairs he paused for a moment, shutting his eyes again and turning his head blindly, like a dog searching after a scent. He went in the end to a small alcove off the kitchen, that might once have served as a rudimentary pantry but was now where his mother kept all manner of odds and ends that lacked a proper home. He reached her sewing box down from the shelf and took the largest needle he could find, with a skein of rough darning thread. He left the box on the side and went to the back door, where a shaft of moonlight was illuminating the waxed surface of his father’s fishing coat. The coat smelt faintly of rain and the river, and Svlad let his fingers run across the surface for a moment before diving into one of the pockets for the rag and oil-stone he knew his father kept there. The other pocket produced a small bottle of oil. His father had taught him to sharpen hooks this year, and the weight of the stone felt familiar in his hand, still slightly warm as if they were both still stood on the riverbank. Treasures acquired, he left the alcove and padded silently into the living room. The mince pies and sherry were untouched, still as precisely arranged as Svlad and his mother had left them. Svlad left the needle and thread beside the plate, the oil-stone wrapped in its rag to the side of the glass. The small bottle of oil he placed on the plate, between the mince pies where the two holly leaves met. The calm that washed over him was followed by a great wave of tiredness, an awareness of the the tick of the clock in the hall and the whirr of the mechanism winding up to chime for midnight. Svlad crept up the stairs on heavy legs, less careful of his footsteps or the creaking floorboards, but the faint snores of his parents remained undisturbed even as he tiptoed past their door and into his own room, to fall heavily asleep in his bed.

It may have been the moonlight that woke him, although what had twitched aside his heavy curtains to allow the light to fall on his face he was too tired to wonder. Svlad sat up, blinking and yawning, before making his way to the gap in the curtains to close them. As he grasped the edge of the cloth he noticed something in the garden below, a faint shimmer of movement against the snow. He looked again, more carefully, and realised that there was a man down there leaning over an upturned sleigh. He had Svlad’s father’s oil-stone in his hand, and was muttering what seemed likely to be a stream of bad-tempered words as he sharpened the sleigh’s skids. There were presents scattered in the snow, hints of shiny paper and satin ribbons. A long scratch marred the side of the sleigh’s glossy finish, and there was a dent of similar proportions to their stone gatepost on one corner. Over to the side creatures, who appeared to Svlad to move between reindeer and horses and half a dozen other animals, were scuffing up the snow with their feet, looking for grass. The man straightened up, and as he did so Svlad saw that his clothes and his skin were changing colour, never quite settling on one thing or another. The man did not seem remotely bothered about this, but instead was looking in askance at the sack he had picked up from the ground, poking his hand through the large hole that had been torn in the side. Svlad saw him sigh and sit down on the edge of the upturned sleigh, carefully avoiding the sharpened skid, to darn the sack with Svlad’s mother’s needle and thread. Svlad sat for maybe half an hour watching the man and the creatures, as he darned the sack and collected the presents, righted the sleigh and harnessed the stamping grumbling animals to the front of it. Finally the man drove the sleigh out of the garden gate, carefully rounding the gatepost, and was gone.

In the morning, Svlad’s stocking lay empty on the hearth, the mince pies untouched, although the sherry had been drained from the glass and by the look of the bottle, re-filled several times. His parents glanced worriedly at each other but Svlad seemed strangely unperturbed by this turn of events. He opened the gifts they had bought him, wrapped in shiny paper and glossy ribbon, and smiled at them like nothing was wrong in the world.

 

**Two**

 

“And what do you want for Christmas?”

The psychologist prodded him, and Icarus curled further into the leather chair he had been left in by the guard who had escorted him here. The chair was too large, and he hadn’t grown enough yet to fit it. The woman in front of him was smiling with the kind of false kindness that Icarus had learned to associate with the worst kind of people at Blackwing. He considered the question carefully. If he were brave he would answer ‘to get out of here’ or ‘to be away from you.’ But Icarus was not brave, he knew it deep inside himself. He was not driven by bravery, or cowardice, or by any of the things the people here seemed to think would influence him. It was only the itch in his fingers now, and it grew stronger every day he was here. The jigsaw was becoming more misshapen, he knew it in his bones. More pieces hammered into place where they didn’t fit, more rises and ridges in its flat surface as the picture distorted and fragmented. Mistakes that spread out like cracks across a glass surface. It all made his fingers itch, made his brain itch, yet here he was being asked what he wanted for Christmas by an unkind woman wearing a kindly face.

“Is it Christmas?” He asked at last. Obviously it must be, but he tried always to appear stupider than he actually was.

“Tomorrow.” The woman confirmed. She smiled at him, sort of.

“I’d like a Christmas stocking.” Icarus didn’t know where that had come from at first; but a memory was dredged up after the words, suddenly bitter in his throat. “I didn’t get one last year.”

“Aren’t you a little old for Santa Claus?” The woman was trying not to sound mocking. She did not seem to realise it wasn’t working.

“I’m ten.” Icarus replied flatly. His mind was still on the memory of his parents, of their house, and of last Christmas Eve. He realised something must be showing in his face when he saw the psychologist’s eyes light up like a predator’s.

“Do you miss your family at Christmas?” She asked. They were always looking for emotions in Icarus, seemed to have some idea that if they could just make him happy, or sad, or angry, then their performing monkey might finally do a good trick. So he shrugged, and returned his face to neutral, and chose deliberately and obviously not to answer any more of her questions. Eventually they got bored of staring at each other, and she sent him back to his room.

It was hardly unusual to be awoken by the alarm. Icarus opened his eyes slowly, drawn first to the sock he had hung from the end of his bed. It was just one of his own socks, dubiously clean and with a small hole beginning at the big toe, but it felt like a significant act of rebellion even if no one saw it. It still hung empty and limp, and it was only after he had established that that Icarus thought to look around the rest of the room, examining with mild interest the patterns the siren lights made as they scattered through the frosted glass that made up his windows. He was used by now to the alarms being set off in the middle of the night. Sometimes one of the other subjects had decided to escape but more often, as far as he could tell, one of the guards had forgotten to properly close a pass-door, or had slipped out for a cigarette through the wrong exit. Riggins often muttered darkly about it as he fluttered around Icarus’ room in the way he hated the most, that false fathering that only reminded Icarus more acutely of what he didn’t have. It took him a few minutes therefore to realise that the alarm was not the same as normal, and it was simultaneous with that realisation that Mona detached herself from his lamp, where she had been a chain for the last three nights, and flickered briefly into human form.

“I’m going to see what’s going on.” She said, and promptly disappeared again. Icarus, who was used to this sort of behaviour, just lay back to wait. She was gone longer than he was expecting, usually it was just a few minutes to find the source of the panic or a guilty looking guard. Eventually a pen that had not been there before appeared on his bedside table. He gave her a few moments to recover before asking.

“What was it then?” The pen twitched and shifted, and Icarus wondered if she was going to write her answers down. But a few moments later the pen rolled off his bedside table, and a human Mona appeared.

“Someone is trying to get in.” She announced gleefully. Icarus looked at her in confusion.

“Get in?” He echoed. “In? Not out?”

“In.” Mona confirmed. “I heard them talking. Someone is trying to get in through the roof. They’ve sent all the guards up there.”

“Who is it?” Mona just shrugged. Identities were something she barely grasped at the best of times. A treacherous flicker of hope was building in Icarus' chest, but he crushed it down hard. Who would come and rescue them after all? Who even knew they were there? “Do you think they’ll get in?” He asked instead, as casually as he could. Mona flickered from a guard, to a gun, to a key. She had obviously tired of spoken communication already.

“I assume you mean no.” A light bulb appeared and lit up briefly before returning to being a pen again. He sighed and put the pen on his nightstand. “Don’t snore.” He muttered to it and turned over to go back to sleep, pulling the pillow over his head to shut out the siren’s wails as best he could.

In the morning of course, nothing had changed. Mona was still a pen on his nightstand, although he told her sharply she would have to be something else before the guards came in and found her there. The last thing he wanted was to be in trouble for contraband because his friend wanted to have a nib and finial for a while. His sock was still hanging limply at the end of his bed, as he’d known it would be. Better to hide that as well before the psychologist came and thought she had finally found a way into his tightly guarded self. By the time the guard came round a new pair of socks, tightly rolled because Mona deserved some payback for having refused to change out of being a pen until the last possible moment, was tucked at the end of his bed. The woman barely gave them a second look before hustling Icarus out of his room and towards the testing rooms. There would be two meagre slices of turkey at lunch, in place of the usual chicken, but otherwise today would be just like any other day.

 

**Three**

 

It was not supposed to snow in London. This was immediately obvious every time it did snow in London, and right now it was especially obvious in Dirk’s tiny bedsit above the betting shop, where the snow was melting around the uninsulated window-frames and finding its way in as small pools of water that dripped down the windowsill and onto the carpet. Dirk was watching one of these drops making its methodical way from the ledge to the radiator and finally the floor, while he waited for the inevitable sound of the first car that underestimated the importance of friction and communed with the lamppost outside his window. Tiring of the water droplets, he closed his eyes and tried to drift. This had once been very easy, he vaguely recalled, but now it took more concentration than he was often willing to give it. Somewhere in Blackwing he had lost something he couldn’t even name, and now finding the source of the itch in his fingers was harder than he knew it should be. He blamed the white noise of the world, where so many pieces had stayed out of place because the forces that should have righted them were locked underground by morons with guns and a misguided sense of their own competence. Essentially it was all Blackwing’s fault, which was a universal constant Dirk could get behind. He sighed, and deliberately tried to stop thinking about it. Something was coming, something big, but as always the details were written in mirror writing on the side of a fast moving train in Dirk’s brain, receding into the distance every time he tried to approach them.

And of course, none of this was helped by the pounding on his door. Dirk sat up and swung his legs off the bed, hoping against hope that this was the good kind of hammering on his door at ten p.m. It was barely four paces from the bed to the door and he swung it open to find the proprietor of the betting shop downstairs, more wild-eyed than usual.

“Mr Gently!” He exclaimed, taking both of Dirk’s hands in his. Dirk, who was not remotely prepared for this, lurched forward across the threshold and caught the door with his foot as he went, inevitably swinging it shut behind him. He winced as he heard the click of the lock into its catch.

“Mr James.” Dirk said politely, trying to get his hands back. This seemed to be an impossibility.

“You must come and see!” Mr James was dragging him now towards the staircase that lead down to the street. Dirk looked down at his bare feet in dismay.

“I don’t have my shoes, Mr James.” He tried.

“Call me Michael. I will lend you my shoes.”

“I’d really rather have my own.” Dirk attempted to gesture back towards the door of his flat with one of his hands, but Mr James was holding on to them far too tightly. Dirk shivered as his feet hit the cold tile at the bottom of the staircase, only to find Mr James was now kneeling in front of him, stuffing his feet into a pair of well used walking boots. To do this he had finally let go of Dirk’s hands, and he briefly considered bolting back upstairs. However, Dirk realised that running anywhere when someone else is manhandling your feet, albeit in a friendly manner, is almost impossible. Giving up to the inevitable Dirk sat down heavily on the bottom step and let himself be hauled into boots and then a thick woollen coat that Mr James produced from somewhere. It smelt strongly of mothballs and rolling tobacco, and therefore almost certainly belonged to Mr James himself.

“Is there a reason you’re dressing me as you?” Dirk asked suspiciously. But Mr James just laughed and pushed Dirk ahead of him out of the front door and into the street. Dirk flinched as he crossed the threshold, expecting whatever attackers had clearly come for Mr James to set upon him instead. But all he felt was the wet snow that fell into his hair and eyes, coming thicker and faster now. A thin layer had begun to stick to the pavement beneath his feet, and he took an involuntary step backwards as a car took the street corner too fast and skidded towards them for a moment before righting itself with a squeal of tyres.

“Isn’t it wonderful!” Mr James cried, holding out his arms and spinning around, his face held aloft. Dirk, who had wet snow slipping down the collar of the too big coat, had the novel experience of staring at someone else as if they were mad.

“Is it?” Mr James grinned at him, and then grabbed his arms again, dragging him into the circle dance.

“It’s Christmas Eve Mr Gently! It’s going to be a White Christmas!”

“And that’s good, is it?” Dirk said cautiously, deciding to treat Mr James as he would anyone who had clearly lost their mind.

“Of course! So many bets this year, so many happy people!”

“Bets on what?” Dirk had managed to free his hands and stop spinning, much to his stomach’s relief.

“On the White Christmas Mr Gently! On the snow!” Mr James stopped his dance and looked at Dirk with narrowed eyes. “Did you not bet on the White Christmas Mr Gently?”

“I don’t really do Christmas.” Dirk replied, pushing his hands into the pockets of the coat to avoid being grabbed again. Mr James looked honestly stunned.

“Not ‘do’ Christmas?” He asked, bewildered.

“It wasn’t ever a big thing when I was growing up. So I don’t really bother.” Some part of Dirk thought this might be a lie, but he’d buried it deep enough that he barely noticed anymore.

“Don’t bother?” This entire conversation was clearly too much for Mr James, who was looking at Dirk as if he was the one who was mad. Dirk thought that was a bit rich, under the circumstances. Another thought struck him.

“You’re a bookmaker. Surely it’s bad for you if a lot of people win bets?”

“Christmas cheer!” Mr James replied happily. “So I lose a bit of money, so what? So many happy Christmas faces Mr Gently. So many smiles tomorrow.” Mr James went back to dancing in the snow, and Dirk began to edge slowly away. His flat was clearly no good to him for now, not only was he locked out, but he had also established that his downstairs neighbour was quite mad. There were places he could go, not great places, but places nonetheless.

“Enjoy your Christmas Mr Gently!” Mr James called after him cheerfully. Dirk, simply grateful that he didn’t want his coat and shoes back, rounded the corner as quickly as he could. He spent the night on an uncomfortable sofa with an acquaintance who didn’t hate him yet and who, more importantly, was as indifferent to Christmas as he was to anything else that didn’t reside at the bottom of a bottle or inside a polythene bag. Dirk stared at the ceiling, shifting occasionally to move the lumps in the couch to new and exciting positions in his lower back. Something in Mr James’ attitude had got to him, although he didn’t know why. He hadn’t hung a stocking since the last time at Blackwing, hadn’t decorated a tree since longer before that than he could reliably remember. The idea appealed to something deep inside him though, something he had tried to squash and kill with as much success as his attempts to ignore the endless itching at the tips of his fingers. It didn’t quite feel ready yet, said the part of Dirk that lived somewhere the rest of himself didn’t have access to, but maybe next year. Across London fingers tapped on the outside glass of a leaking second floor window but Dirk, not there to see it, never knew.

It was several weeks later when Dirk picked up a newspaper as he boarded a flight to America, mostly so he could amuse himself with his own private game of creating a crossword using random words he picked from the air. When he unfolded it he was less than completely surprised to see Mr James’ face staring back at him, because these sorts of things happened all the time. He was equally unsurprised to find that Mr James had been arrested for a scam involving several other bookmakers. The stakes of his customers, betting at artifically depressed odds, were re-invested under their names for bets on a White Christmas at slightly higher odds with another bookmaker, each bookie in the chain making slightly more until the unknowing firm at the top paid out a staggering amount. It had come crashing down when the bookmaker Mr James had invested his money with had refused to honour the stakes, because Mr James couldn’t produce the betting slips that went with them. In the ensuing fight the police were called, and by Boxing Day half the bookmakers in north London were enjoying a less than Merry Christmas.

Dirk felt in the pocket of the wool coat he was still wearing, and placed the large number of betting slips he found in the seat pocket in front of him. His mind had already drifted away from the newspaper to the new case, and he barely thought of Mr James and his Christmas cheer.

 

**Four**

 

“Dirk, what are you doing?”

Todd had been asking that question with varying levels of panic, irritation, exasperation and bewilderment for the last twenty minutes. Dirk, who had spent eighteen of the last twenty minutes hanging half out of their apartment window, and the first two (panic inducing) minutes climbing out of it and securing himself by means of an ankle tied to the radiator, finally deigned to haul himself back up the sill and stick his head into the room.

“I’m making it really easy.” He said, and went back to whatever he was doing.

“Making what easy?” Todd rounded the corner of the kitchen counter still stirring the somewhat dubious bolognese sauce he was making. He was not an expert cook, but on the other hand he wasn’t an active fire hazard either and therefore he had taken over most of the cooking duties.

“Not to worry Todd.” Dirk said cheerfully as he dragged his remaining limbs back over the windowsill and bent at an implausible angle to untie himself from the radiator. “He won’t miss it this year.”

“Who won’t miss what?” Todd stuck his finger in the sauce and tasted it, then grimaced and returned to the kitchen to formulate some sort of culinary rescue plan. The conversation, such as it was, was derailed by the doorbell.

“I’ll get it!” Dirk bounded over the couch to reach the door as if it were a race. Todd’s reaction to the doorbell, learned over one too many cases, was to glance at the door, then at the baseball bat he kept within reach.

“Farah! Todd, it’s Farah!”

“Yep, I can see that. Hi.” Todd called from the kitchen, less than ten feet away.

“Why is there a Christmas stocking hanging from the side of your building?” Was Farah’s opening gambit as she collapsed onto the couch and cast a bag of beer bottles vaguely in Dirk’s direction. His limbs for once opted for co-ordinated and he caught it. Todd raised an eyebrow at Dirk, who grinned.

“Making it easy.” He said cheerfully.

“Making it easy.” Todd echoed in Farah’s direction, the shrug evident in his voice. For a moment Farah’s brows drew together as if she was about to question this statement, but obviously thought better of it.

“What are we eating?” She asked instead, coming into the kitchen and gently shooing Dirk before her, sending him in the direction of the fridge with her beer.

“Spaghetti bolognese-ish.” Dirk answered with his head still in the fridge. Todd made a face but nodded, it was not an unfair description.

“I might not be able to get all the beer in the fridge.” Dirk muttered. Farah looked over his shoulder and saw the middle of the fridge entirely dominated by a giant turkey.

“You do know there’s only three of us, right?” She directed the question at Todd, who was now wrestling spaghetti out of the pan. Todd pointed his spoon at Dirk’s back, and Farah raised her eyebrows but said nothing more.

“Leftovers.” Dirk said, flippant, as he balanced the last bottle of beer on the turkey’s cellophane covered back. Farah reached round and immediately removed it, opening the kitchen’s only drawer to rummage for the bottle opener. “There’s always leftovers at Christmas.”

“Yeah but lasting ‘til Easter?” Farah muttered to Todd as she passed, beer in hand.

“We could probably stretch it to next Thanksgiving.” He murmured in return. Dirk steadfastly ignored them both, hunting for plates and cutlery in a slightly haphazard way that involved more cupboard opening and closing than was probably strictly necessary.

“He seems happy though.” Farah sipped her beer and leaned against the counter, watching their personal whirlwind from the safety of the edge of the kitchen.

“He’s full of Christmas spirit alright.” Todd grumbled back.

Much later, when Todd found him, Dirk was sitting on the windowsill in the living room. The lights were off, only the soft glow of the tree and the weak moonlight cast shadows about the room. He had on the white t-shirt and soft flannel he habitually wore to sleep, and had contorted himself somehow to fit his long body almost completely onto the windowsill, leaning the side of his head against the pane and watching the world outside with a lazy intensity. ‘Icarus with wings folded’ Todd thought from nowhere as he approached.

Farah was long since asleep, claiming the spare room amid dire warnings about just how long the ‘giant mutant bird’ would take to cook in the morning. Todd glanced at the clock on the wall, just making out the hands in the gloom. A little past two, Dirk could not have slept for long before he got up to perform whatever vigil this was. Crossing the room to the windowsill he laid a hand gently on Dirk’s shoulder. He did not quite startle, but turned his head to look up at Todd, for once taller with Dirk so folded in on himself.

“What are you doing?” He asked gently.

“Waiting.”

“For what, Santa?” Todd gave a half snort of laughter, but Dirk just shrugged, and returned to watching the world outside the window. “No shit, really?” Todd looked through the window for the first time. The night was still and clear, and unusually silent for their neighbourhood where no peace went long unshattered.

“Maybe.” Dirk said noncommittally. “You can never be sure.”

“You’re always sure, it’s one of your most irritating features.” Todd returned, trying to lighten the mood.

“I’m never sure of anything.” Dirk was still watching the world outside, his attention only half engaged in their conversation. Todd felt the muscles stiffen under the hand he had left grasping Dirk’s shoulder as he sat up, suddenly animated. He leaned round Dirk to try and follow his gaze and understand what had caught his attention.

It took him a second to see it, like one of those magic eye pictures that Amanda had spent endless hours showing him when they were children. At first the sky seemed superimposed on itself, but as he watched a shape formed out of the starry backdrop and details began to resolve. Strange creatures that grew and shrank, had antlers and tails and wings all at once and not at all. And a man, like the creatures, fat and thin and old and young, dressed in red and green and gold and black. As quickly as Todd focused on one idea it seemed to melt into something else, the shadow in the corner of his eye centred in his vision. Dirk leaned further forward and pressed his face to the glass as the idea approached, and Todd tightened his fingers in the back of his shirt, insanely afraid that he would fall, or leap, out of the window. He did attempt to open the window, fumbling the catch and struggling to haul the sash up with Todd’s ever tightening grip on his t-shirt. Eventually he succeeded in opening a gap wide enough to push his arm through, and a moment later pulled it back with a sharp cry of triumph, his momentum tumbling him from the windowsill and taking both him and Todd to the floor in crumpled heap. By the time they had got back to their feet, the man and his creatures were little more than a faintly fading outline against the night.

“What the hell was that?” Todd asked as they turned away. He looked down at the object in Dirk’s hand, and was surprised to find him clutching the stocking he had hung outside the window earlier, now bulging with brightly wrapped objects. He vocalised the first thought to successfully form in his brain. “Aren’t you a little old for that?”

“Better late than never Todd.” Dirk replied, smiling his most beatific, completely cracked smile. He was already feeling about in the stocking, taking out presents and exclaiming over his treasures. The toe of the stocking turned out to contain a satsuma, and Dirk threw it from hand to hand, grinning with such honest enjoyment that Todd couldn’t help but join him.

“Shouldn’t you leave that for the morning?” He asked. Dirk, his mouth now full of several segments of satsuma and a handful of chocolate coins, pointed at the clock.

“It is morning.”

“Not my kind of morning.” Todd reached out and stole one of the remaining chocolate coins, tucking it into his shirt pocket. “I’m going back to bed, are you coming?”

“In a minute.” Dirk replied. He was running his fingers over something he had found right at the end of the stocking, an old grey stone worn smooth on one side and wrapped in a piece of soft cloth.

“OK, goodnight.” Todd rose and padded back to the bedroom. Dirk stared after him for a second, his fingers tracing the stone, the scent of the river rising from somewhere too far away to remember.

“And to all a goodnight.” He murmured.


End file.
